Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power

Peter Ruppert, Elena Stancanelli and Etienne Wasmer

Annals of Economics and Statistics, 2009, issue 95-96, 201-220

Abstract: A search model of the labor market is augmented to include commuting time to work. The theory posits that wages are positively related to commute distance, by a factor itself depending negatively on the bargaining power of workers. Since not all combinations of distance and wages are accepted, there is non-random selection of accepted job offers. We build on these ingredients to explore in the data the relationship between wages and commute time. We find that neglecting to account for this selection will bias downward the wage impact of commuting, and marginally affect the coefficients on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also use the theory to calculate the bargaining power of workers which largely varies depending on demographic groups: it appears to be much larger for men than that for women and that the bargaining power of women with young children is essentially zero.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27917410 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power (2009)
Working Paper: Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power (2009)
Working Paper: Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power (2009)
Working Paper: Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power (2009)
Working Paper: Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adr:anecst:y:2009:i:95-96:p:201-220

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Laurent Linnemer

More articles in Annals of Economics and Statistics from GENES Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Secretariat General () and Laurent Linnemer ().